In the previous learning management session, we were given an assignment: interacting with our seniors and get the answers to some given questions (e.g. “What do you wish you’d known/done when you were a first year student?”). Most seniors were busy preparing for a quiz next day, so I had to stay awake till late night to ask them questions. As a consequence, I was dozing off during the Learning Management sessions 4 and 5 (both were scheduled yesterday). But, I did manage to listen to some gyaan.
Session 4 (the part when I wasn’t dozing off) was mainly about three things: the grading system at SPJIMR, approaching people fearlessly, and looking at things from others’ perspectives, but having your own perspective.
The grading system
The session started with a discussion on the assignment given in the previous lecture. One advice that almost all of us had received from our seniors was: “Grades are important. Don’t ignore exams and quizzes — post-recession, the most sought after employers seek only the toppers during the placement.” Someone initiated a discussion about the concept of relative grading at SPJIMR (relative grading means that if you get 99% marks in an exam, and everybody else gets 100%, then you are an epic fail).
Prof. Merchant first explained that SPJIMR didn’t have any exams earlier, when the batch size was small. The attendance wasn’t compulsory either! Quizzes were introduced to test whether the people have read the things that were supposed to be read before the lecture. As the batch size grew, the concept of relative grading was introduced to identify the participants who were lagging behind. The attendnace was made compulsory to make sure that the hall was full during the CEO guest lectures. More rules were introduced as per the AICTE guidelines, and so on.
Prof. Merchant insisted that we don’t have to take the seniors’ advice literally — we can choose to learn for seeking knowledge, instead of learning for grades. Just because another person has had a bad experience with something doesn’t mean that we need to formulate a negative opinon on it. He said that first of all, the quizzes at SPJIMR don’t require a person to indulge in rote learning (which has been true for me, during my two weeks here). And if that does happen, we can always approach the faculty members concerned, and tell them that they should find a better way to evaluate the participants.
This brought us to the topic of approaching people without being apprehensive of facing a “No”.
Approaching people without being reluctant
Many of us are reluctant to approach people and talking to them, because we are apprehensive of being embarrassed, demeaned, ridiculed or insulted.
Prof. Merchant narrated an incident in this regard. Mr. X, one of his friends, was holding a function for his organization. One day, while walking on the road with his wife, Mr. X saw the famous Bollywood actress Rekha in front of a building. He decided to approach her and invite her to his function. His wife told him, “Are you mad? Don’t be ridiculous — she is Bollywood’s top actress. Do you think you can just approach her like that and she’ll accept your invitation?” But, Mr. X was adamant. His wife said, “If you want to approach her and talk to her, go alone. I am staying here — I do not want to be embarrassed.” So, Mr. X went to Rekha and invited her to his function. He got a blunt reply, “How can you come and talk to me like that on a street? Come to my office tomorrow, if you want to invite me to your function.” Mr. X visited her office next day, and sure enough, Rekha accepted the invitation and came to the function!
Prof. Merchant then talked about one of his students, who got a letter of appreciation from the Chief Minister of Delhi for his DOCC project. When asked, how did he manage to do that, he said “I simply approached the Chief Minister’s Office, and told them that I wanted to showcase my project to the Chief Minister”. The guy narrated a childhood experience he had: When he was 7 years old, he wrote a few poems, which his father and his school got published in form of a book. When the school’s principal asked the boy “Whom would you like to launch your book?”, the boy replied “the President of India”. Most people would laugh such demands off, “Ha ha ha, the kid is so innocent. He doesn’t know that the President is a busy man.” Nevertheless, the principal sent a letter to the President of India, asking him if would be able to launch the book. In a few days, he got a reply from the President’s office, asking him to select a date for launch from the list of available dates!
Moral of the story: You should not be reluctant in approaching and talking to people. If people say “No” to you, that’s OK — you’re not losing anything!
Looking at things from others’ perspectives, but having your own perspective
Finally, Prof. Merchant said that we need not follow all the recommendations we’ve got from our seniors (e.g. “Participate in as many inter-college fests as possible”, “Concentrate on better grades” etc.). The seniors’ recommendations come from their own experiences as individuals. He said that it’s best to look at what we want to get from this programme, and decide for ourselves. Easier said than done!
Prof. Merchant gave an example to substantiate his point: he talked about how SP Jain Center of Management, Dubai was set up. When SPJIMR decided to “globalize” itself, Dr. M L Srikanth (the SPJIMR dean) sent a team (including Prof. Merchant) to Dubai to find out the feasibility of setting up a campus in Dubai. The team, after a detailed study, advised against the move. But, Dr. Srikanth decided to go on with his Dubai plans, and SPJCM started operating in a few months. It turned out to be a big success.
Prof. Merchant concluded that listening to others’ opinion is important for gaining perspectives. And that was why we were given the assignment of talking to our seniors. Different people have different perspectives: a person standing on the top floor of the SPJIMR hostel building will look at the green campus and the lake and say “Wow! What a beautiful scene!”; a person standing on the ground floor in the rainy season might look at the all the muddy ground, and say “The ground is so dirty!”. A manager should be aware of all the perspectives, but should also be intelligent to know the difference between these perspectives and take decisions on his own.
Session 5 focused on the discussion of first few pages from Peter Drucker’s Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices. Too much gyaan for me! I just kept dozing off.
Session 6 was more interesting — we started our discussion of the book What Management Is: How It Works and Why It’s Everyone’s Business (this book by Joan Magretta happens to be our textbook for the subject Learning Management). We discussed various booms and bubbles. Prof. Merchant then explained why MBA is overhyped, and why learning management is still important. Also, a UTVi cameraman recorded some parts of the lecture.
Other mentionable things that happen today include: we played a game of monopoly and prepared financial statements for the different teams (these will be used to award us grades), and we got the results for two quizzes conducted last week. I got full marks in one quiz, but managed only 80% in the other one (which means, I’ll probably get a C grade, since half the class has got 90% or above marks).
